Daytona In February: Where The Men Are

They began arriving last week at Daytona Beach, drawn by mysterious, urgent yearnings that take hold of them this time of year.

From the Carolinas they come, from Alabama and Tennessee, from those places, the outbacks and hinterlands mostly, where the miracle of internal combustion is given all laud and glory.

They come singing praises to their own special deities, idols they can call by their first names -- Bobby and Darrell, Cale and Dale, Richard and, most recently, the one they know as Wild Bill.

And by this weekend their numbers will be legion, tens of thousands of them, come to witness the High Holidays of stock car racing at the Mecca of motor sports.

Okay, that might be a little bit too much mixing of religious metaphors. Still, to compare Daytona Beach with to Mecca is altogether appropriate. Come February, the World's Most Famous Pit Stop begins to resemble nothing so much as some Moslem city, Damascus or Tripoli, where to see a woman is a rarity and men and men alone occupy the bars, the restaurants, the public places.

This isn't to say there are no female race fans. But the men so outnumber the women during Speed Weeks that it creates a setting unlike any other American sports spectacle, and certainly unlike any other spectacle that comes to Daytona Beach, which has spectacles aplenty.

Say what you will about spring break, but at least there's a better balance of the sexes. And even the guys on the Harleys during Bike Week usually haul along their honeys.

But cruise State Road A1A during Speed Weeks -- when there's nothing going on at the Speedway, at least -- and what you see are men, men by threes and fours, walking the strip, checking out the local action, which, distressingly, is mostly other men like themselves.

Visit the hotel parking lots. There are men looking under the hoods of cars, men checking tire treads. I even saw several men waxing cars. On a vacation, for gosh sake, which probably is an excellent example of just how sorely their women are missed.

Sit a spell in a hotel lobby. The other chairs are occupied by men, men reading the Racing News, men debating Buicks vs. Fords, men talking man talk. I have no real objection to all this. A little male bonding -- I guess that's what the psychologists call it, although it sounds slightly suspect to me -- has its merits, I suppose.

It's just that there are so many men and so few women that the whole scene is unsettling. I guess I would never make it in a Moslem city. Men without women -- and vice versa -- day after day. It's just so dreary.

I conducted a head count the other morning at the Volusia Diner, the popular U.S. Highway 92 eatery where the waitresses call all the men ''Honey,'' and they serve breakfast 24 hours a day.

Aside from the waitresses, there were only two women in the diner. All the others -- 47 of them -- were men. And they were men in town for the races.

It's not too hard to pick them out. At the casbah of car worship, the caftan is replaced by a windbreaker emblazoned with decals for Goodyear and Diehard, the turban supplanted by caps that advertise almost every race-car- related thing imaginable, from STP to racing sponsors like Miller beer and Gatorade. The boys of February pay strict attention to their uniforms.

There was a table of them right next to me, seven from someplace called Cheraw, which I think is in South Carolina and which I picked up by eavesdropping on their conversation, a favorite pastime of mine.

''Buddy, you ain't really gonna go over to that pay phone and call your wife, are you?'' I heard one of them say.

''Well, I told her I'd check in at least once a day,'' said Buddy.

''Aw, Buddy . . . . ''

''Send her a postcard, Buddy.''

''Buddy, we gotta get out of here, man. They gonna be cranking up out there any minute. . . .''